Artwork Culsu's Art & Maps

[Culsu]

Get it for free here!

Adventure awaits! Travel to the cozy streets of DUSKTOWN, a well-defended, mid-sized trade settlement ruled by the Barons if Craithe. Commerce moves across the river and along the eastern road, wjere bandits and river pirates ply their trade. Weird lights and noises echo from the Hundredfold Caverns to the south-west. The Ruined Tower at the edge of the forest is said to be haunted. The grave diggers speak in hushed tones of strange sights between the crypts at dawn. And there is a whisphered rumor making the rounds in the smal roads off the boulevard that the dead of Hangman’s Hill will rise with the new moon to have their revenge on the living.

Dusktown is a high-quality, colored town map that you can use as an easy means to set up an adventure or bolster your campaigns. The example labels are for a Dungeons and Dragons setting, however additionally to that version this package also provides you with versions without labels, without labels and the sigil, and completely without any decorations at all. Additionally you get each version as a day & night version.

 

[Culsu]

The rates displayed below concern projects for private use, ie. for your tabletop group or for VTT use without the intent to publish them for financial gain. If you want a map for a commercial project, be advised that by my FAQ and Terms & Conditions the base price increases by 30%

Projects demanding larger sizes and/or more details – and thus, more work – will be priced accordingly. Prices are derived from the average expected working hours on the project. In either case, please go ahead and contact me with details for a personal quote adjusted for your project.

 

[Culsu]

Parchment-style map I finished recently for E.M. Leander and her new book. It's a Roman-inspired settingthat was a joy to work on, especially the small location cut-outs.

 

[Culsu]

The Wending Coast is a personal map project I've worked on to get back into the mapmaking and worldbuilding groove.

 

[Culsu]

Well, the irony. I had finally gotten around to start experimenting with battle maps for Battletech when the whole Blain Pardoe debacle's exploded onto the internet.

Well, maybe as an effort to show that you don't need official products to enjoy an IP here's a WIP of my very first battlemap usable for games with big stompy robots. It's not finished yet, but the basics are remarkably easy to establish once you've figured them out. Truth be told, the most time-consuming part is creating and/or searching for fitting textures.

So, withhout further ado, here it is. Always remember: it's a WIP!

 

[Culsu]

Okay, here it is. I've refined it The map is explicitly compatible with the official hex sizes and nomenclature of BATTLETECH, but can also be freely used in any other context where you have to stage an encounter in such an environment. The map size is 18 x 22 inches (ie. 15 x 17 hexes).

I'm sorry for the watermarks, but you can get the clean file here on a Pay-What-You-Want base, meaning you don't have to pay for it if you don't want to (not that I'd complain if you left me a few shekels and/or a constructive review).

EDIT: I also looked at the official BTech map stuff, and aside from one exception I'm less than impressed. For example, I hope nobody cons you into paying $1.99 for this. That's 15 minutes of work, on a bad day. That's just no value for your money.

 

[Culsu]

Rolling Woodlands expands on the smaller pay-what-you-want map Wooded Hills Ambush, quadruppling the available size and turning it into one very large (36x48 inches) hex battlemap consisting of woodlands of variýing density, hills and cliffs of varying heights, and terrain of varying difficulty. The map is explicitly compatible with the official hex sizes and nomenclature of BATTLETECH, but can also be freely used in any other context where you want to play a prolongued battle in varied terrain with plenty of room for cover and maneuvering.

The map size is, again 36 x 48 inches (ie. 15 x 17 hexes) and is provided as print-ready (300 dpi) PDFs file as well as high quality JPEGs for your convenience. You get the complete map file, and the map in four parts for easier printing as well.

This one isn't free as it took me a whole lot if time and effort to get done, but $3.99 seems a fair price for a poster-sized battlemap to me. You can get it at DriveThruRPG.

 

[Culsu]

I have now played around with Disco Diffusion for a whole slew of different images, and tried out Midjourney AI today. As such, I believe I can give a somewhat solid overview of which I'd recommend, and what the pros and cons of each one are.

Disco Diffusion
DD works with Google Collab as a base, needs you to connect it to your Google Drive, and is more technical in its operation, meaning you can see the code that's being used, you can change the parameters therein. That includes image sizes, image iterations, saturation, etc. which is all rather byzantine and needs an additional tutorial document to understand.

Disco Diffusion's great strength is that it's sort of a community project, and that using it is (technically) free of charge. If you're not using a subscription, you can only use it when Google's GPU power is available. That being said, in my time playing around with it you could usually access it everyday, with a few hours of downtime in between.

DD works in batches and steps. Batches means that you create your image prompt and settings, and the GPU will create as many images based on your parameters until the batch is complete (for example, the preset batch number is 50). As for steps, this means it starts with 'noise' and adds more and more detail with each step it calculates. The highest number of steps, IIRC, is 1000 per image. I've been using between 200 and 250 steps.

Keep in mind: it won't do these images simultaneously! You do 1/50 with steps 1-250, then 2/50 with steps 1-250, then 3/50... and so on!

That, however, means that Disco Diffusion is slow. And I mean slooooooow. At 250 steps one image of a batch took me 16-17 minutes to build. One image. Of fifty. Mind, the system will shut down if you stay afk too long, so the best you can get even if you try to keep it running during the night while you go to sleep is maybe 4-6 images.

It is possible that with Collab Pro or other plans you get faster and more GPU time but I don't want to try that just for fun.


Midjourney AI
As far as ease of use and ease of setup go, M.AI certainly is superior to Disco Diffusion. M.AI uses Discord, is intuitive to operate, and generates not one but four images in parallel with each prompt you give. And M.AI is lightning fast.

I'm not kidding.
It does so in less than 15 seconds, and then allows you to refine and upscale potentially all four of them simultaneously. With each step you can further upscale, change lighting, or remaster the chosen images. Again, each step also only takes maybe 30 seconds.

That's maybe 1 minute tops for an upscaled, finished image compared to at least (depending on step numbers) 16 minutes for DD.

Unfortunately, being easy to use and fast comes with the downside of only having a very limited free use contingent. You get 20 prompts for free, and if you want to use it after that you have the choice between a $10 and a $30 subscription model.

That being said, joining the Discord is free, and I'd actually recommend doing so. Browse the different Discord servers and check out the massive number of pretty impressive pieces people have the bot create.

Conclusion
Now, which one is "better"? That's a bit of a subjective take, tbh. Disco Diffusion is free. That's it's really one, big mark that makes it always available. But is it good at what it does?

Ehhhh, sorta, but not really, in comparison. Now, much comes down to personal preferences in style, but I made the experience in my limited time with Midjourney AI that it is significantly better at using your prompts.

Here are two prompts I used for both AI art generators.

cyberpunk city, photorealistic, highly detailed, bladerunner style, tall skyscrapers

Midjourney AI (2 minutes, upscaling included)

Disco Diffusion (16 minutes)

highly detailed Star Wars style spaceship, dark background (same calc. time as first prompt)

Midjourney AI

Now, this isn't really Star Wars-ish, but it definately is a detailed starship that can be used in a variety of ways to support stories etc..

And then there's... Disco Diffusion and this:

I have no idea what in H.R. Giger's name this is supposed to be.

So, my choice after trying both? Midjourney AI! Honestly, I'm really tempted to try out the $10 subscription for Midjourney AI just to try it out for some time more.

 

[Culsu]

Rolling Grasslands provides you with a large (36x48 inches) hex battlemap consisting of grasslands with several hills interspersed with patches of forest. The map is explicitly compatible with the official hex sizes and nomenclature of BATTLETECH, but can also be freely used in any other context where you want to play a prolongued battle in varied terrain with plenty of room for cover and maneuvering.

The map size is again 36 x 48 inches and is provided as print-ready (300 dpi) PDFs file as well as high quality JPEGs for your convenience. You get the complete map file, and the map in four parts for easier printing as well.

You can get it at DriveThruRPG for $3.99.

 

[Culsu]

Commission of a fan map for "Clover Spear - The Story of the '56 War". It shows the Inner Sphere at the conclusion of the war.

 

[Culsu]

Commission done for the first novel by Opëshum, "Gods on Trial: The Series", published by 1iR3 Publishers, showing one of the regions of her world.

© 1iR3 Publishers

 

[Culsu]

Small part of a cool commission I'm currently working on for an indieauthor and well known Youtuber. Really thrilled to work on all those neat location markers.

 

[Culsu]

Finished my first map done in Inkarnate Pro (which is a $25 p.a. subscription). Decent program with good variety, might offer commissions for it, too.

 

[Culsu]

Created by Youtuber, commentator and prolific storyteller RazörFist, the continent of Travinas is rich in history, mystery, and danger. And sometimes that danger catches simple thieves like Xerdes in its web...

If you like classic pulp novels, fantasy, and shady characters, get ready to dive into the Nightvale series!!!

I love a good black and white map, and this one was a treat to work on, especially as I got very good feedback and information that lead me to make all the right little decisions.

Besides, the man was truly a pleasure to work with; he's actually gone so far as work an own language for the setting.

 

[Culsu]

A black & white map commissioned for Italian writer Gabriele Governatori, with regions themed around zodiac signs tucked away safely behind a large circular wall, protecting the inhabitants against the demonic wastes outside.
Finished in 2022.

 

[Culsu]

Alright, here's my latest battlemap compatible with Battletech. River Ford is a large (36x48 inches) hex battlemap consisting of a mixture of grasslands, hills, forests, swamps and rough mountain valleys, all divided by a river with a narrow crossing.

You can get this monster at DriveThruRPG or the WargameVault:

 

[Culsu]

The Desert Battle map pack is now available at DriveThruRPG.

It contains nine individual battlemaps of 15x17 hexes compatible with the official hex sizes and nomenclature of BATTLETECH, and also the same as one large combined map.

If you're not certain whether to spend $5.99 for what amounts to a map larger than 140x170 centimeters you can also just try out the very first part of it, Desert Dunes I, effectively for free (it's 'pay what you want').

The other eight parts will be made individually available at $0.99 a piece.

 

[Culsu]

The Swamp and River Map Pack allows for battles on a massive map and a great variety of swamp-related terrain types, allowing for all kinds of objectives. It also contains an urban portion as well as several custom terrain types. In the Swamp and River Map Pack you will find several custom terrain types.

These include the following:

• Swamp
• Toxic Waste
• Ruins
• Dead Trees

Feel free to use them as you see fit. It is not my job to tell you how to run your games. I merely hope to provide you with options for them.

The map size is provided as print-ready (300 dpi) PDFs file as well as high quality JPEGs for your convenience. You get nine individual pieces of 15x17" with 1" bleed, or one massive map.

 

[Culsu]

A simple battle map for a savannah/prairie encounter. Digital (JPEG) and print-ready (PDF). One large map, or four 15x17" maps, all with 0.125" bleed for easier print. Available on DriveThruRPG.

 

[Culsu]

A 31x34 hexes large battlemap of a large and winding desert canyon, with green spaces in betwen and rising cliff faces all around. Ideal for all sorts of encounters and battles requiring three-dimensional maneuvers, evasion, and ambushes.

The map is compatible with the official hex sizes and nomenclature of BATTLETECH, but can also be freely used in any other wargaming context.

The map is provided as one large image as well as four equally sized 15x17 inch images. It comes print-ready (300 dpi PDF files) as well as high quality JPEGs for your convenience. The PDFs all come with a 0.125 inch bleed for easier printing.

Available at DTRPG for $2.99!

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